cipal statutes
contain a narrative clear and precise of the motives of everything that he
did--a narrative which at least may have been a true one, which was not
put forward as a defence, but was a mere explanation of acts which on the
surface seemed violent and arbitrary. If the explanation is correct, it
shows us a time of complications and difficulties, which, on the whole,
were successfully encountered. It shows us severe measures severely
executed, but directed to public and necessary purpose, involving no
sycophancy or baseness, no mean subservience to capricious tyranny, but
such as were the natural safeguards during a dangerous convulsion, or
remedies of accidents incidental to hereditary monarchy. The story told is
clear and distinct; pitiless, but not dishonourable. Between the lines can
be read the storm of popular passions, the beating of the national heart
when it was stirred to its inmost depths. We see established institutions
rooted out, idols overthrown, and injured worshippers exasperated to fury;
the air, as was inevitable at such a crisis, full of flying rumours, some
lies, some half lies with fragments of truth attaching to them, bred of
malice or dizzy brains, the materials out of which the popular tradition
has been built. It was no insular revolution. The stake played for was the
liberty of mankind. All Europe was watching England, for England was the
hinge on which the fate of the Reformation turned. Could it be crushed in
England, the Catholics were assured of universal victory, and therefore
tongues and pens were busy everywhere throughout Christendom, Catholic
imagination representing Henry as an incarnate Satan, for which, it must
be admitted, his domestic misadventures gave them tempting opportunities.
So thick fell the showers of calumny, that, bold as he was, he at times
himself winced under it. He complained to Charles V. of the libels
circulated about him in France and Flanders. Charles, too, had suffered in
the same way. He answered, humorously, that "if kings gave occasion to be
spoken about they would be spoken about; kings were not kings of tongues."
Henry VIII. was an easy mark for slander; but if all slanders are to pass
as true which are flung at public men whose policy provides them with an
army of calumniators, the reputation of the best of them is but a spotted
rag. The clergy were the vocal part of Europe. They had the pulpits; they
had the writing of the books and pamphlets. Th